Why Nintendo Has the Golden Touch

Nintendo has pioneered genres, created gameplay staples in others, and completely turned a few on their head. No genre is safe from Nintendo’s innovation, so which battlefield should they invade next?

[FallenAngel1984]

"They created a whole new subgenre of the racing genre with Mario Kart"

Sega actually created the kart racing subgenre with 1988's Power Drift, which released 4 years earlier than Super Mario Kart.

Give credit where credit is due

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Fair enough, but if we're giving credit where it's due, then Nintendo's the one that popularized it, despite not having created the first game of its kind.

[blackblades]

Only reason they pulled it off was because of mario.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

@Black
Or because their concept for a kart racer was better.
THAT makes more sense than just chalking it up to "because Mario". No amount of iconic characters makes a bad game good, and even Mario has had a few duds in his day.

[Erik7357]

I would kinda agree with wonderfulmoney,

Nintendo was the one that actually pulled it off and made it popular

[chris235]

it hasn't. check their "success": every generation with exception of the attack-from-the-back wii era they sold less and less. wouldn't exactly call that a golden touch.

[scarface0121]

Wow because sales is what makes a game or a console great?

You and idiot fanboy sheep like you are everything that is wrong with gaming.

[Bronxs15]

No sales don't make a console great. But great consoles sell a lot.

If people go into a store to buy a console and more and more are choosing one particular console. And less and less are choosing the other console. It would stand to reason that one appeals to more people and the other is loosing its appeal. That's common sense. No fanboyism. So much for the golden touch argument.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

@Bronx
The devil is in the details, and great consoles are more than capable of being undersold because of bad marketing and lacking support on the developer side.
So no, a good console doesn't necessarily sell a ton.
Just ask Sega about that one. Great consoles, but they didn't stay in the hardware game despite that.
Heck, you could even say the same about the Wii U; the console itself wasn't horrible, and it got some good games, but the marketing was an absolute JOKE, and Nintendo's support of it had an obvious dip after the first six months or so, not to mention the almost complete abandonment of most third parties, and the complete denial of support from people like Bethesda.
Thankfully the Switch isn't repeating that, in either marketing or support. It's doing better in both.

Also, @Chris; their software and other sales have made up the difference that the lower hardware sales had, though, which has allowed Nintendo to continue on doing what they like.
The fact of the matter is, it does require a golden touch to stay in the game this long when so many people are actively working against them, especially in this age of social media, where any loser with a keyboard and a comment section can start up a small-scale smear campaign against anything they don't like, and get a hoard of sheep to start following it with little thought into WHY beyond petty surface reasons, many with clear solutions or explanations that they have no intention to consider or accept.

[blackblades]

Golden touch my butt. If they had the golden touch then everything they did would of been a success, wii, wiiu, virtual boy.